Power restored to all of Douglas County

Two power outages leave nearly 6,000 with no power for part of Friday

Power was restored to all Westar Energy customers by 2 a.m. Saturday morning, according to Westar Energy's Web site, after two power outages on Friday.

A power outage late Friday night in Lawrence left more than 3,500 Westar Energy customers in north-central Lawrence without power, hours after an outage around 5:40 p.m. left 2,563 people in southwest Lawrence without electricity.

The first outage darkened several traffic signals at the tail end of rush hour on heavily traveled roads in the western part of the city: Inverness and Clinton Parkway as well as Wakarusa Drive and the South Lawrence Trafficway and Clinton Parkway and Wakarusa.

The second power outage seemed to be most concentrated in the area of Sixth Street and Lawrence Avenue, according to the Westar Web site.

Nick Bundy, a Westar energy spokesman, said by e-mail Friday night that the first outage was caused by equipment failure when a snake entered a piece of equipment. The second outage was also likely caused by wildlife, he said.

Haskell to feature

youth leadership event

Beginning Sunday, Haskell Indian Nations University will be host to American Indian high school students from 17 states and 20 tribes for the Bureau of Indian Education’s Summer Youth Leadership Challenge 2009.

The students were selected based on their academic achievements and overall leadership qualities, and the challenge encourages the students to become community leaders. Tribal leaders, university officials and others will instruct the students.

Several events are open to the public, including a Healthier Haskell 2-mile walk and run at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the Jim Thorpe Fitness Center.

Golfer Notah Begay III will be a special guest at an “Empowering Youth through Sport and Media” event at 3:30 p.m. Monday in the Haskell auditorium.

Comments

Was the reporter turned around a bit??
"and included several traffic signals on heavily traveled roads in the eastern part of the city: Inverness and Clinton Parkway as well as Wakarusa Drive and the South Lawrence Trafficway and Clinton Parkway and Wakarusa."

All,
I've been exchanging e-mails with a spokesman for Westar. No word yet on the second outage, but the first was caused by a snake crawling into a piece of equipment. I think you can imagine what's become of the snake. More information here as soon as we know it.

Talked to Westar again. Half of those without power should be back on by midnight. The other half, well, it depends on when equipment is repaired. They also suspect wildlife as the cause of this outage.

"I think we know what happened to the snake" uh, it tastes like chiken now!

Heuter,
sadly,when the power goes out sometimes the cell sites go down too, because they don't have backup power, dunno what percentage do, but I think most don't have backup power.

also, you and every one of your neighbors picked up the cell phone. cell phones use radio signals, which limits the total number of dial-tones available in an area. power goes out, some disaster happens, everybody grabs their cells and few get to use them.

thanks Jonathan for the updates. I think some of us wish we had that back number for westar you have.

jackpot-Do you really think that it's LPD's job to investigate why the power is out? And to be honest people, don't call the police department when your power does go out and report it to them. They can't do anything about it. There is no magic switch they keep there that turns it all back on and no, they don't know when it will be back on because they don't work for the power company.

tg13 "There was no word immediately available as to what caused the traffic outage, but Westar spokesman Nick Bundy said crews were on the way to investigate the cause." Please reread my post. The Paragraph is from the story why is Westar handling the "traffic outage"?

We do have equipment in place to prevent wildlife from disrupting power, however this equipment can't prevent all outages and all kinds of wildlife.

The second outage was caused by a snake as well... What is happening, is they are getting into the equipment to try to stay warm at night. When they lay across two phases, that completes a circuit and damages equipment... As you can imagine, at such high voltage, there is not much left of the snake.